The Blue Flightline and "Thirty-Nine"

I checked into the "Patch", signed for a house in what was then "New Capehart", sent for the family and went to work for Blue Section, crewing "A" model tail number 103. E-9 Billy Hawkins was running the show, and I was working in "B" Flight, for Jerry Hendershot.

Duty was good, and Blue Section HERE, was a marked improvement on Blue Section at Lakenheath.

So was the area! It was SO GOOD to be back in the states. Most military personnel have an appreciation of this country that their civilian counterparts will never know. You have to LIVE somewhere else, to truly appreciate what we have here.

Make no mistake----------things here today are turning to CRAP, but I'd still rather be here than anywhere ELSE I've ever been. Others countries where I've been stationed, or have gone TDY, in many cases, the people cannot do anything about the laws they have to live under. WE CAN...........we just choose NOT to, lately, for some reason.

One of the first things I did, before I ever signed into Blue Section, was to drive out the gate, head for the old "pits" on the way to Grandview, and SHOOT!!!

I hadn't touched a trigger in three years, and baby......that TOO is part of living in a FREE country. There's a "cattle-grated" pull-off on the rightside of the road to Grandview, just a little ways past the new "side" gate at the Base.

When I first got to Mountain Home in '72, the jack-rabbit hunting was terrific, and you could even hunt COYOYES out there! Plenty of green sagebrush, and a good number of back-dropped pits to signt a gun in at.

Today, the dirt-bikers have it so torn-up, and "jump-bumps built, you almost can't even GET to some of old pits anymore. When you DO, you rarely even SEE game out there anymore, with all the noise and racket that gets made out there on a regular basis, driving them out.

Well, times change, and I have since found other places to shoot, without any motorized interuptions. But in 1982, the old "Grandview Pits" were still pretty well "unmolested", and it really felt GOOD to feel RECOIL again. Most people in the world don't have the means, availability or the even the basic RIGHT to have a gun. And their dictorial governments WANT it that way.

To me, the burnt powder from the muzzle and the smell of linseed oil from the walnut stock against my cheek, are the "sweetest perfumes" that have ever filled my nostrils. Running the patches and wiping 'em down later, with a cup of coffee on the table, is a feeling only a free man can know. Your day to day liberties are in YOUR hands. Mot someone else's.

It was good to be home. It really was.

I'd bought an old 1950 Dodge pickup truck with an old metal "canopy top" on it, and my buddy, Harvey Sarven & I went deer hunting up in Area "thirty nine", the most common deer area in Elmore, but it had still always been my favorite. It had been snowing and we had to chain-up to make it up to the Ice Springs Campground.

Talk about COLD! All we had were sleeping bags, sleeping on the metal bed of that old truck, with that bare metal "roof" above us. No insulation at all. We could barely move the next morning and Harvey actually had FROST on the fringes of his hair when we got up the next morning!

I told him I would "fix breakfast", so I got a couple cans of corned beef hash out of a bag I'd packed, opened them, stuck a fork in each one and handed one of them to him.

From the days of Camp Pendleton and Vietnam, I was no stranger to eating out of cold cans. Not a problem. Harvey however, looked at me like I was on drugs or something..........."What's THIS, he asked?"

"Breakfast!"

"Uh........NO!"

With that, he reached into a box HE had brought and pulled out a portable Coleman stove, and we ended up with a HOT breakfast. (These "Air Force" guys have this thing about being "civilized.)

We hunted all day Saturday but never got a look at anything. I had my converted '98 Mauser chambered in 270 Winchester with me, and Harv' was hunting with his favorute 30.06, a 1903 military Springfield. Though we never got a look at anything, that's not really what a true hunting trip is about. It's a break from work, and a time to share experiences and "swap war stories" with a good friend.

Sunday morning, we decided to drive to some other spot and hunt another area, before we had to drive back to the base. But the old truck wouldn't start. In 1950, they were still using the old 6-volt ignition system, and it had been so cold up there, the engine would barely turn over.

This was before the age of cell phones, and we didn't want to be marooned up there and maybe AWOL on Monday morning, so we started hiking down the road, hoping to catch a ride back with another hunter. (We could always go back up there NEXT weekend and try to get it started if the weather was warmer). We hadn't gone more than a couple of hundred yards, when two guys in a Jeep came by. They had a tow chain WITH them. Seeing as how the battery was just DOWN from trying to start it, it WOULD most likely fire up on a "pull-start", so they drove us back to where we were parked, hooked the chain up, and sure enough, at around 10 mph, I eased the cluched out and she fired right up! They stayed there alongside us until it was warm enough to run on its own, then they took off......and so did WE!

Electing NOT to "crowd our luck" that weekend, we drove on down to the Pine Cafe, got coffee and sandwiches to go (we never DID shut it off-------"just in case"), jumped back into the old truck and went home.

It was the last (and ONLY) time I ever had a problem with that old truck, but it sure picked a BAD place to DO it!

Aside from deer hunting, I loved to just get out in the sagebrush with a 22 and chase jackrabbits around, and even take a shot at a "whistlepig" whenever I'd spot one. My oldest son Dennis loved to shoot and so did my younger son Danny, when HE was old enough to get in a little "trigger time."

Occasional trip to see the folks in Medford.........life was pretty good around here. But there'd be one more overseas tour. It would be a 1-year "remote" though, so I wouldn't have to uproot my family again.

I'd like to close this particular post with an appeal.....to hopefully be spread around.............

More than once, up there in the hills, I have climbed a steep slope, sat back against a tree, knees up with my rifle across them. I have watched the sun come up and evaporate the dew off the grass. I've heard the stream down below, the birds singing, the fresh smell of pine in the morning.......man, this is God's country!

I've also hiked to ridges that were so deep in pine needles, you'd think that no man had set foot up there for YEARS................and then you'd see them.........

Beer cans.......empty BEER CANS........that someone had packed all the way UP there FULL-----------but didn't have to manners or respect for the land, to FLATTEN them, and pack them back DOWN EMPTY.

This is the kind of crap that gets public and BLM lands CLOSED-OFF to the rest of us.

Then we've got these bozo's who just HAVE to shoot holes in road signs. In the minds of liberal lawmakers and politicians............if ONE does it, we ALL do it! ALL gun-owners are irresponsible and we ALL need to have to pay for it!

Yep.........."Ban 'em ALL.......Ban 'em ALL!.............see what they DO? NOBODY should be able to own a gun!"

These idiots look for ANYTHING they can, to photograph, then mimeograph!

Then we've got the OTHER ones.........who, rather than drive out to the local dump, where it's FREE.......they have to go out into target pit areas, shoot their old television or microwave to pieces, then just drive off and LEAVE it there!

I'd like to shoot some of these dorks myself, if I could ever catch one of 'em in the act. It makes it rough on the rest of us, who are ALREADY prejudiced against by the anti-gun liberals in public office.

So.....if ya go out there...........PLEASE clean up after yourselves.

And roadsigns as a rule, do NOT have backstops behind them. Bullets tend to fly all the way to the nearby freeway, or some farmer out in his field.

In my own strange little way, I do "somewhat" agree with the Democrats..........not EVERYBODY is responsible enough to own a gun, and not EVERYBODY should HAVE one.

Yes........that was the "rightwing extremist, mean-spirited moron-squad, racist, conservative, paranoid Tea Bagging old NAZI" who said that!